This one is complicated to review. I have tried incredibly hard to separate my thoughts on the story itself from what I have to say about the author's stated inspiration for it, because I wanted to ensure I was entirely real about the content and my feelings about it, as well as what I feel about the inspiration behind this book. That way, those considering reading it have as much info as I can give them so as to make up their own minds whether to read.

Firstly, on the story itself. I really thought I would love it from the concept and the many positive reviews I've seen here, but sadly, I didn't. I found the main character impossible to relate to - his naivety about the systems and people he worked for and enabled felt practically unforgivable, and even as he slowly changed, I never took to him. I also found the prose pretty dry, and it was worsened by a narrator I just couldn't get along with. The story did legitimately improve somewhat when the children came into it, and I even got the odd laugh, and a few genuinely emotional moments from it. But it never truly caught me up in their story and their world the way I had hoped it would. I just couldn't shake my initial reaction to this man and his almost compartmentalised view of the world he inhabited and the lives he touched. This is my second of Klune's books, and the first (his newest) I gave 5 stars to, so I was genuinely shocked at how little I got along with the actual writing of this book.

So, secondly, on the appropriation, here.

I found out after obtaining a copy of this book, but just before I read it, that the (white) author has said this story was inspired by the Sixties Scoop, and I was absolutely horrified by the ignorance and clear harmfulness of that. I had almost made up my mind not to read it after all, and changed course at the last minute (ADHD brains don't love switching track once one has been decided through the difficult barriers of choice paralysis). I honestly regret that choice. I couldn't remove (and shouldn't have) that knowledge from my experience of this book. And, oof, did it hurt to know his inspiration.

This is a book full of hope and cosy concepts, but set in a painfully dystopian world. In other words, and trying not to spoil the story, it's got some really idealistic aspects to it. It therefore feels even more offensive to the many, many First Nations people who suffered horrifyingly in the Canadian residential schools they were forced into, to claim their suffering was the inspiration for this book. The trauma these systems and schools caused is still so close, and is/will be so enduring. This is not historical. This is living memory! The last school was closed only in the late nineties!!

It was just so incredibly disappointing and disgraceful, and I can't see myself reading any more of Klune's books unless he genuinely learns and grows - and I can't find evidence that he has. In fact, quite the opposite, he appears to have ignored the outrage entirely and continued to publish books without addressing it. If I'm honest, I'm not certain I could get past it even if he showed true growth - but, sadly, perhaps we'll never know.

Rating wise, I'll be honest, I literally couldn't decide how best to rate it, nor what would be right or fair - or even honest to my own rather confused reactions. So I'll let my words alone speak for it.

This book is a gift to humanity.

I can usually find a caveat to "everyone should read this" and I think the only caveat I can find here is that you should read this when you have the brain space to go through the "kaleidoscope of portals spanning our most intimate lives, our communities, the broader terrain of struggle" (Maynard, p. 250). Both writers are academically trained, which shows - but it's more accessible than many academic texts because of the format and infusion of personal stories into the writing.

Maynard and Simpson write letters back and forth mostly during 2020 - using the portals opened up during early COVID-19 lockdown and the uprisings of the summer of 2020 in the so-called US and Canada as starting points to understanding the past and present of settler colonialism both in Canada and globally, and to imagine ways forward.

Black and Indigenous relations / prison abolition / Indigenous sovereignty and governance / nation vs nation-state / world endings and beginnings / communing / not handholding white and settler audiences / radical grief, reckoning, practices, and hope founded on living with reciprocity

Some quotes:

“To value collective livingness, to touch and know life fully, to know a life that is not in some way predicated on and subsidized by the suffering of another: I suspect that this is what liberation is.” (Maynard, p. 250)

“Nibi [water] reminds me that radical imaginings and world-building must international in orientation, reaching beyond Canada, beyond North America and beyond the Atlantic— not as an afterthought at the height of mobilization, but as foundational practice. This, of course, is something that the Black radical tradition, Black feminists, and Indigenous liberation collectives have been doing for decades.” (Simpson, p. 261)

Audiobook: I have been so grateful that more non-fiction and even academic texts have been on audio lately and I enjoyed the audiobook. I did have to get used to the difference in how they read and found it easier to listen to Maynard but it worked well that they each read their own letters.

READ THIS BOOK